Coming full circle with JavaScript and SQLexplorer Having the opportunity to work on a project like SQLExplorer has been a highpoint in my FileMaker career. It was a great way to participate in the collective learning of the ExecuteSQL function by the community when it first hit the scene. But, it’s also been a great way to get a handle on the increasingly popular interaction of FileMaker Pro and…
One of the less obvious, but exciting new features in FileMaker 13 is the two new clauses available in FileMaker’s SQL syntax. It’s less obvious, because you need to read the new FileMaker SQL Reference Guide to see they’ve been added. (Here is the FileMaker 13 SQL Reference. All FM13 docs are here.) The new clauses are OFFSET and FETCH FIRST. We’ve been asking for these functions in the FMSQL engine…
Jason has just completed a major new version of SQLexplorer that makes it easier for beginners and pros alike to write better queries. If you haven’t used SQLexplorer before, it writes FileMaker SQL queries for you as you fill out a simple form using FileMaker terms your familiar with (sorts, relationships, etc). You can then test your query right in SQLexplorer before copying and pasting it into your…
Jason’s swapping out the results portal in our free SQL Explorer with a webviewer so he can take advantage of column resizing and other UI goodies you just don’t see in FileMaker. The second part of the video shows how he lets users easily swap out the styles used in the “portal” as their layouts change. HTML5 in FileMaker apps. Yummy.
Background: ID Lists I have one thing (at least) to follow up with on my ExecuteSQL using the Found Set post from a little bit back. This was to see if I could get the RecordID parsing optimized (or at least faster) using some of the techniques in Todd’s Hyperlist demo. Although this is not the slow part of the process–feeding the large set of values into the…
I spent some time this weekend doing some old fashioned FileMaker hacking that I’ve always enjoyed (viva La WorkAround Pro). Definitely inspired by Todd Geist’s very cool hyper-list stuff, but he had also reminded me of the problem of ExecuteSQL on the found set, and I’ve heard this as a common feature request. My big take away from Todd’s comments was that the found set is a uniquely…
I’ve had some small pre-FileMaker experience with SQL and had it in my head that subqueries work in the FROM clause. They do in MySQL etc, so I was frustrated when I couldn’t get that to work in FileMaker’s SQL as it’s really needed in some cases. In a current project we have a case where there is a relationship from Contacts to Loans and we wanted to…
If you’re using SQL in your FM12 work, you’re in luck. Jason has released a new version of SQLexplorer that writes queries which survive field renaming. It will also apply this abstraction to queries you simply type in there (vs ones you build with the wizard). Big step forward. Still free and unlocked, the new version is here.
Just got this from John Weinshel and had to share… “I love SQL, love that it’s as old as relational databases, sort of Codd’s afterthought. It’s like Freud, after describing his entirely new model of the universe, added a coda, psychoanalysis, for putting it to use. Except SQL is free and it works.” Priceless.
Very proud to have shipped SQL Explorer, a tool for learning SQL (so you can use ExecuteSQL in FileMaker 12) using FileMaker metaphors you already know. You can learn more about the Explorer and download a copy here: SQLexplorer But I wanted to take a moment and point out three things that make this a new kind of product for us… 1. This is the first product we…
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